Usenet ``newsgroups'' can be something of a misnomer. They may be
interesting, informative and educational, but they are often not news,
at least, not what you'd think of as news. But there are several
sources of news, sports and weather on the Net.

One of the largest is Clarinet, a company in Cupertino, Calf., that
distributes wire-service news and columns, along with a news service
devoted to computers, in Usenet form.

USA Today also has a presence on the Net, through the Cleveland
Free-Net system, and we'll show you how to get news of eastern Europe
and Brazil as well.

Distributed in Usenet form, Clarinet stories and columns are
organized into more than 100 newsgroups (in this case, a truly
appropriate name), some of them with an extremely narrow focus, for
example, @news{clari.news.gov.taxes}. The general news and sports come from
United Press International; the computer news from the NewsBytes
service; the features from several syndicates.

Because Clarinet charges for its service, not all host systems
carry its dispatches. Those that do carry them as Usenet groups
starting with @news{clari.*} As with other Usenet hierarchies, these are
named starting with broad area and ending with more specific
categories. Some of these include business news (@news{clari.biz}); general
national and foreign news, politics and the like (@news{clari.news}), sports
(@news{clari.sports}); columns by Mike Royko, Miss Manners,
Dave Barry and
others (@news{clari.feature}); and NewsBytes computer and telecommunications
reports (@news{clari.nb}). Because Clarinet started in Canada, there is a
separate set of @news{clari.canada} newsgroups.

The clari.nb newsgroups are divided into specific computer types
(@news{clari.nb.apple}, for example).

Clari news groups feature stories updated around the clock. There
are even a couple of ``bulletin'' newsgroups for breaking stories:
@news{clari.news.bulletin} and @news{clari.news.urgent}.
Clarinet also sets up new
newsgroups for breaking stories that become ongoing ones (such as major
natural disasters, coups in large countries and the like).

Occasionally, you will see stories in clari newsgroups that just
don't seem to belong there. Stories about former Washington, D.C. mayor
Marion Barry, for example, often wind interspersed among columns by
Dave Barry.

This happens because of the way wire services work. UPI uses
three-letter codes to route its stories to the newspapers and radio
stations that make up most of its clientele, and harried editors on
deadline sometimes punch in the wrong code.

If your host system doesn't carry the clari newsgroups, you might
be able to keep up with the news a different way over the Net. USA
Today has been something of an online newspaper pioneer, selling its
stories to bulletin-board and online systems across the country.
Cleveland Free-Net provides the online version of USA Today (along with
all its other services) for free. Currently, the paper only publishes
five days a week, so you'll have to get your weekend news fix elsewhere.

Telnet: @host{freenet-in-a.cwru.edu} or
@host{freenet-in-b.cwru.edu}

After you connect and log in, look for this menu entry: NPTN/USA
TODAY HEADLINE NEWS. Type the number next to it and hit enter. You'll
then get a menu listing a series of broad categories, such as sports and
telecommunications. Choose one, and you'll get a yet another menu,
listing the ten most recent dates of publication. Each of these
contains one-paragraph summaries of the day's news in that particular
subject.

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty are American radio stations
that broadcast to the former Communist countries of eastern Europe.
Every day, their news departments prepare a summary of news in those
countries, which is then disseminated via the Net.
To subscribe, send an e-mail message to

listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu

Leave the subject line blank, and as a message, write:

subscribe rferl-l Your Name

Daily Brazilian news updates are available (in Portuguese) from the
University of Sao Paulo. Use anonymous ftp to connect to

uspif.if.usp.br

Use cd to switch to the whois directory. The news summaries are stored
in files with this form: NEWS.23OCT92;1.
But to get them, leave off the
semicolon and the one, and don't capitalize anything, for example: